I  love home grown cucumbers.  There is absolutely no relation to the tasteless varieties you find most of the year in the supermarkets.  These are a Chinese variety called Suyo Long. They are crunchy, flavorful and sweet  with tiny seeds. We bought the seeds from Johnny’s Seed Catalogue.  

  This is the first year our cucumbers plants  haven’t been gobbled up by the rabbits and woodchucks or blighted by one of the many diseases that attack cucumbers.  So now we are in cucumber heaven.  The best thing to do with these is to eat them sliced with a little salt.   Here are some of the simple and great things I do with cucumbers when I want to do something a little more exotic.

CUCUMBERS WITH DILL AND FETA

Stay simple with cucumbers and don’t salt them until the last minute.  This Greek preparation combines small cubes of cucumber and the same size cubes of good quality Feta cheese and chopped dill.  Right before serving add the salt and toss with a really good olive oil.

Tomato and cucumber salad

This preparation is Middle Eastern.  This is the salad eaten in Arab and Israeli families because where you can eat amazing cucumbers and tomatoes most of the year. This salad is great stuffed into a pita with hummus and tahini. I  make this salad with small cubes of tomato and cucumber, salt and finished with olive oil again.  But in the Middle East you’ll see this salad with lots of parsley and scallion and lemon juice.  When you have perfect tomatoes and cucumbers for only a couple months around here, I want to enjoy them unadorned.

Cucumbers and Carrots with Miso Dip

 Remember Kayuga Japanese Restaurant on Eddy Street?  We were frequent flyers there and I liked their miso dip so much that I asked for the recipe.  I was rewarded with a little piece of paper on which was written the ingredients but not the quantities.  In the true spirit of intuitive  cooking I’ll also pass along the basic ingredients and method and then leave it up to the reader to concoct their own version.  Start with 1/2 cup of Sake and 1/4 cup of mirin.  Boil together until reduced to about 1/2 cup.  Turn off the heat and add miso a little at a time starting with a heaping tablespoon.  The trick to miso is not to boil it.  I use white miso in this recipe, but you can experiment with different types of miso.  You’ll want the consistency to be like ketchup.  It will thicken once cooled.  Add 1 teaspoon of sesame oil and a few shakes of roasted sesame seeds.  Then taste.  If you want it sweeter, add a pinch of sugar.  This lasts for several days in the fridge. 

Miso can be found in many grocery stores.  Greenstar has it in bulk in the back of their store so you can buy small quantities  and  experiment with different types of miso.  Wegmans has tubs of miso in the cooler section which also containes seitan and tofu.

NOW IS THE TIME TO MAKE RATATOUILLE WITH ALL LOCALLY GROWN  INGREDIENTS!!

Ingredients for the RATATOUILLE

The bell peppers were from our garden, the zucchini and onions were grown by Full Plate CSA and the plum tomatoes and baby eggplant were bought from Mandville Farm at the Farmer’s Market.

I decided to do something new with the ratatouille that would allow people to pick and choose their vegetables.  I sliced and fried the onions in olive oil until they were well cooked, brown and caramelized.  The onions were then evenly spread in an ovenproof 8X12 or so dish.

I then cut the peppers into 4 or 5 strips lengthwise and cooked them also until they were slighly charred and well cooked.  They were then spread over the onions in a neat row. 

Next I cut the eggplant in half lengthwise(no need to peel or salt or anything fussy) and fried them also until they were almost cooked and slightly brown. They were also attractively laid over the onions in a neat row.

 I cut the zucchini into think slices widthwise and made nice rows of with my two medium sized eggplants.  I didn’t precook them since I like them to be a little crunchy.

Finally, I skinned the tomatoes by putting them briefly in boiling water and then removing them and skinning them.  I cut them in half lenthwise and arranged them attractively on or around the vegetables.  Make sure all the vegetables are properly salted.

I used dry bread to make breadcrumbs and mixed about 1/2 cup with 1 TBS of dijon mustard, 1 or 2 crushed large garlic  clove and 2-3 TBS olive oil.  I did this in my mini food processor but you can also do it by hand.  Spread this over the vegetables and bake at 400 degrees for about 20-30 minutes or until beginning to brown. 

This is best made the day before, refrigerated and reheated.  You can serve this room temperature or bring it to room temperature and then warm it up briefly under a broiler. 

The beauty of this presentation is that the eggplant haters or those of us that can’t eat peppers can partake only of their favored parts of the ratatouille.